Female Public Prosecutor Says She Felt ‘Despair’ at Ex-Chief Prosecutor’s Claims of Innocence in Sexual Assault Case

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:48 JST, December 12, 2024

A female prosecutor who has made allegations of sexual assault against the former head of the Osaka District Public Prosecutor’s Office expressed her desperation after the defendant changed his stance and declared his intention to enter a plea of not guilty.

At a press conference held in Osaka on Wednesday, the woman said, tearfully, “I couldn’t speak; I just broke down crying. He is making victims of sex crimes despair.”

According to the indictment and other documents, in September 2018, during his tenure as chief prosecutor, Kentaro Kitagawa, 65, took the woman, who was too drunk at the time to resist, to his official residence in Osaka and sexually assaulted her.

At his first trial, in October this year, Kitagawa had said he wanted to apologize, but his defense attorney held a press conference on Tuesday and stated that he would plead not guilty, saying he thought she had given consent.

The accuser said that when she learned of the defendant’s not guilty plea, she felt that she and her family would not have suffered so much if she had not reported the case and just endured it alone. She revealed that she could not sleep at night and could not stop crying in front of her children on Wednesday morning.

As for the defendant’s claim that she consented, she strongly denied it, saying, “We were just a boss and a subordinate, and I was too drunk to resist at the time.”